Bill Meehan Quotations

We're going to be winding down (earnings) and more focus will be turning toward the presidential election. However, there's not much one can do since the race appears too tight to call. On a poll-by-poll basis, you could see drug stocks impacted negatively or positively, with tobacco stocks and defense stocks similarly impacted.

We're getting closer to the earnings period, and the bulls are hoping that the actual quarterly results will be in line or better than expected and alleviate the fears that there's another warning coming in every night.

I don't think we're in for Armageddon, but there's not going to be any visibility on earnings. So we've got months of trading fun and investors can go to the beach.

I don't think it's going to help the economy very much, and it's certainly not going to help corporate profits.

Having cash all the time to some degree makes a certain amount of sense. I don't ever advise people to be 100 percent in or 100 percent out.

The overwhelming key will be, as companies report, it won't be as much about what they report but what they have to say about the fourth quarter and 2001.

I would tell people who are overweight in technology to use any bounces to lighten up in those areas, raise some cash and shift portfolios into more defensive positions.

I think we are making a change back to a more historically normal environment and I think value will outperform growth.

I think that's evidence that a good deal of any weak earnings is priced into the market because the expectations have been lowered by analysts and further lowered by realistic expectations of the Street.

I think it will be to a greater extent a larger problem than most people anticipate. Obviously, it's going to have a major impact on certain industries.

You have to be completely deaf, dumb and blind to think that anything with '.com' on it is your ticket to fame and fortune.

There are analysts out there talking up their favorite tech stocks. On the other hand, there are still concerns that large cap tech stocks may be doing some pre-announcements, so there are a lot of cross currents.

There is not enough earnings and/or revenue growth to justify valuations in a lot of the technology stocks and there is a great amount of fear that analysts will be slashing away at their earnings estimates for next year.

Contrary to logic, people were hoping the Fed would change their bias to a neutral stance. Part of the exuberance earlier was an increased appreciation of the likelihood that we would have a president-elect before the market opens on Monday.

There's not enough fear and there was too much hope.

Saying the right thing and doing the right thing are different.

People that are overexposed in tech should rethink the thesis that many seem to hold that since stocks are down (significantly), they are going to shoot to the sky. Last year was an anomaly.

People expected that Asia was pretty much over, and things would get better over the better part of the year. Now, that's called into question here, and technology is a pariah now. And I think there's probably some more downside, near-term, for technology.

A lot of air has come out of the Internet stocks, but we have to put it into perspective, some of these stocks are up 1,500 percent or so in the matter of a couple of years. I think there is more downside.

A lot of people have turned much more optimistic that once the blue chips get hit, that indicates the bear market is dead. Valuations are down, but they're still not cheap.

There was too much hope built up that the Fed was going to cut by more than 50 basis points. We had a rally in anticipation of Fed action but we are in a bear market. The hopes and prayers of the bulls was totally on the shoulders of the Fed.

As we reach the end of the quarter, there's increasing optimism that the damage is done. We saw the beginning stages of the fact that when the economy slows, there are no sectors that go unscathed.

It's a pattern that's repeated virtually every day. At least today there was a reason to open higher. This is not a good sign that every analyst was out pumping up their favorite tech stocks and here's the result.

Everybody knows the Fed is going to lower rates. You'll start hearing people talk about more than a 50-basis-point (a half-percentage-point) rate cut -- that wouldn't shock me.

In the past Greenspan has implied market valuations are OK. as long as earnings growth is sustained. But there's a lot of concern valuations are too high?and now we've had a couple of earnings warnings.

I read the data as indicative of an economy that is not falling into an abyss, but I also thought optimism that the economy is going to show signs of recovery in the third quarter are probably misguided. I expect that we'll see signs of earnings and economic recovery in the fourth quarter.

Clearly there are signs that we are going to see a much less rosy picture in capital investment, and we're certainly in a bear market in technology. I would expect many investors still have not been able to pare back their exposure to technology to the degree that many would like to.

This is all Greenspan. He's made it very clear that the Fed will go to neutral bias.

The economic calendar and what companies have to say about how their fourth quarter and next year expectations are will be critical, especially in the technology sector. That's of much greater importance than the elections situation.

The market is always dealing with uncertainty, and this particular piece of uncertainty is not terribly complicated. There will be a President Bush or a President Gore, and neither will have a strong mandate from voters.